Tag Archives: Teaching

Choose Your Own Classroom Adventure with inklewriter

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IMG_0558.jpgMost eBooks are still pretty boring as objects: text, pictures, maybe a video or interactive visualization in a more experimental work. But that landscape may be changing, thanks in part to the number of cool free tools for building interactive books. One of these platforms, inklewriter, has some great potential for use with students in the classroom or for creating interactive stories or texts.

Last week, Inkle Studios released “Future Voices,” a curated collection of stories produced with its interactive story development tool. This slick iPad app features the tech behind Frankenstein, an interactive adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel by Dave Morris. Play through any of these stories for a while and you’ll see everything from straightforward choices of action to complex moral dilemmas and experiments. You can also check out many experiments on the web, including Emily Short’s Holography–she’s also written some thoughts on inklewriter as a platform.

While Inform 7 (as discussed last week) uses a parser interface based on interpreting a broad range of user actions (get lamp, open door, look at book, etc.), Inklewriter uses an interaction model similar to ’80s Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks, which recently came back into print and made the transition to eBooks. However, it goes beyond any of the simple page-shuffling models of those past books in part because it can keep track of decisions and variables from the user’s actions.

Inklewriter has a great tutorial “story” to introduce writers to the platform. The interface, shown below, is mostly free of distractions and built around creating story nodes and choices:

Click to embiggen.

Most of the complexity comes from keeping track of connections, which are identified as “loose ends” until they are linked to another story node, and adding conditions to the availability of options. Conditionals are based on if/then logic pulled from story exploration thus far–so for instance, if the player has visited their house and checked their email, they may have an option to head to a meeting that a player who ignored their email wouldn’t see. A built-in story mapping tool helps the author keep track of these conditions and connections.

Inklewriter and similar platforms like Varytale also offer the potential for mapping out interactive narratives for other settings. The above photo is from a “live” choice-based story stenciled onto the sidewalks of the Mission District in San Francisco–I can imagine planning such a story with students using one of these tools, then installing it in an appropriate setting.

Personally I’d like to try building a textbook in inklewriter, perhaps one for programming or another self-guided topic that could be paced and refocused according to user choices. Inklewriter offers a paid service to convert story files to Kindle eBooks, which can then be sold through Amazon. Anyone can publish web-based versions of their stories for free.

I’ll be trying out inklewriter in my Interactive Narrative class. Have you tried inklewriter or played through any of the stories on the platform so far? Share your experiences and ideas for using or making interactive books in the comments!

[CC BY 2.0 Lead Photo By Flickr User Enersauce, Screenshot from inklewriter]

Medical Emergencies in the Classroom

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While we have written posts about various kinds of classroom disruptions, until now ProfHacker hasn’t covered what to do in the event of a medical emergency in the classroom. How would you deal with a student who has an epileptic seizure in class? What if a student passes out, or she suffers a severe allergic reaction? I generally think of myself as prepared in the classroom, but when one of these situations happened to a student in one of my classes, I realized that being prepared academically and pedagogically is not the whole picture. When it came to being prepared for a medical emergency, I was anything but. But how do you prepare for the unexpected?

While absolute preparation is impossible (unless your Magic 8-Ball is a heck of a lot more accurate than mine), there are a few easy things we can all do to minimize disruption for all of our students and get help quickly if it is needed.

First, find out whom to call in the event of a medical emergency on your campus. It might be Campus Safety or it might be another number, but whatever it is, program it into your cell phone and bring your phone with you to class.

If you teach in a space with unreliable cell service, know the location of the nearest landline–it might be an office down the hall from your classroom, or it might be a floor (or more) away.

You might consider taking a basic first aid and/or CPR class. Many public universities offer discounted courses for students and employees. If yours doesn’t, the local Red Cross or YMCA are other possible options.

In the event of an emergency, dismiss the class and clear the room if possible. Be aware that the student in distress may well feel very self-conscious about what has happened. If they have a friend in the class, it might be helpful to have that person remain behind. If an ambulance, medical professional, or campus safety officer is coming to help the student, have one student meet them in the parking lot or entrance to the building and guide them to the classroom. It is also a good idea to pack the student’s belongings for them so that they don’t lose their materials — e.g. their wallet, their laptop, their books…

My student’s situation turned out to be a minor one, but it still served as a wake-up call for me.

Do you have other advice for how to deal with medical emergencies in the classroom? Please share in the comments.

[Creative Commons-licensed flickr photo by gwire]

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Should You Say Yes Or No?

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tangled wireDo you ever find yourself looking at your calendar of upcoming events and wondering why you ever agreed to do one of them?

Whether it’s a professional obligation, a service commitment, or a social event, many of us say yes without really taking the time to evaluate whether that’s the right response.

Too Many Commitments, Not Enough Time

If you say yes to everything, you’ll very quickly become overwhelmed. This is true for anyone, but many academics struggle with this for two main reasons:

Some parts of your schedule are flexible and some are not. Classes or meetings that are held at set times are firm commitments that can’t be modified. But other research and service obligations may have more flexibility, which can actually be harder to allot time for.

Many academic commitments are hidden or variable. In addition to balancing research, teaching, and service commitments that are more or less predictable for a given semester, many faculty are asked to take on other kinds of tasks that blur the boundaries between those categories. Writing letters of recommendation for students applying to graduate school, for example, can be seen as both a teaching responsibility and a service to the larger profession. Reviewing manuscripts for a press or journal, or serving as an external tenure reviewer, are professional obligations that many faculty gladly take on, but one rarely gets much lead time to plan where that work will fit into one’s schedule.

Why Do We Say Yes Too Often?

We care. Most of the over-committed academics I know are passionate about their teaching, invested in their research, and care deeply about the workings of their institutions. But if you’re over-committed then you can’t really give your best to things and people that are important to you.

We don’t have a clear sense of our prior commitments and priorities. If you don’t have a handle on all of your existing commitments — whether that’s blocking off writing time in your calendar each week or coordinating your schedule with that of your family members — you can’t possibly know whether you have room in your already busy life for something else.

It’s often easier to say yes. If you’re someone who wants to be collegial, agreeable, and well-liked, it’s easy to want to say yes. If you’re in a quasi-social situation, or in a group, you may feel that it’s often easier to just say yes to something. If you’re in a hurry, it’s easier to just say yes without really thinking a commitment through.

Some Questions to Consider

If you’re concerned that you’re saying yes to too many things, or to not enough of the right things, then a structured method for evaluating the next opportunity or invitation that comes your way might help. Here’s a checklist of questions to get you started:

  • What would be the benefit of doing this?
  • Who would I meet or connect with through doing this?
  • What would I learn from doing this?
  • What experience would I gain from doing this?
  • What would I have to give up to do this?
  • What would be the consequence of not doing this?

Changing your Yes Habit

The most important thing you can do to ease your habit of over-committing is to institute a 24-hour waiting policy on any invitations or commitment decisions. Very few things have to be decided on right then and there, and once you’ve said yes to something, it’s much harder to back out of it if you change your mind.

If saying yes is your default pattern, you may need to practice saying something different. Here are two scripts you can use:

That sounds really interesting. Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you tomorrow with my decision.

That sounds really interesting. Let me check something and I’ll get back to you in a day or so with my decision.

If you’re feeling pressured to make a decision right away, I recommend the second script. “Let me check something”  reminds you and the other person that you have other commitments and/or people in your life you are responsible towards.

Then, use a few minutes of that 24 hour time to go through the checklist and evaluate whether this invitation or obligation is really something you want or need to do.

Are you over-committed? Let us know in the comments!

[Creative Commons licensed image by flickr user Peter Zoon]

Open Thread Wednesday: Re-entry Strategies

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Dubai Wingsuit Flying TripMy classes start back today, bringing to an end the one-month period of midyear triage that some might call vacation time. While work inevitably continues during the holidays, that time is for many of us marked by a very different schedule and pace of life than the semester’s more rigid order of teaching and meetings.

By the first day back, all syllabi are (hopefully) ready and the major work of planning is done, yet I still find that starting off a new semester requires first surviving re-entry syndrome. Such feelings can accompany any adjustment with a major change of pace: Erin offered some strategies for handling the re-entry syndrome that comes with returning from a distant conference. Going from research or other work back to teaching is similarly disconcerting.

Many fellow ProfHackers have shared their tips for starting off on the right foot: Natalie gathered several time-management strategies for the new semester and Heather shared her new semester checklist, which I’m trying out myself this spring. And as George reminds us, planning can include life outside the university and even involve a major trip to the grocery store.

My beginning of semester rituals include planning upfront for appointment-based exercise (the early investment makes me feel guilty if I’m tempted to skip when crunch time hits later) and spending a week re-immersing myself in whatever I’m teaching. For programming courses, like the intro course I’m taking this semester, that means making new mini-games, while for more media studies oriented classes it means getting caught up with the latest readings. This helps ease the transition when I move into the classroom and back to topics that haven’t been at the forefront during the holiday, and gives me new ideas for how I want to approach my courses.

What are your strategies and rituals as spring semester begins? Share your re-entry management tips in the comments!

[Creative Commons Photo By Richard Schneider]

Digital Distractions: The Grading Game

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Exam resultsGiven the popularity of phrases like “grading jail” to describe the stress of the competing demands to offer meaningful feedback in the shortest amount of time possible, it seems unlikely that there’s any fun to be had in grading papers as part of a game, but that is the wager of The Grading Game, by modes of expression.

The Grading Game (iOS) makes you the TA of Dr. Snerpus, the meanest faculty member on campus, who demands that you flunk students for saying mean things about him on social media. You are then presented with a variety of papers with typographical and grammatical errors, and your job is to find them in a given amount of time. If you succeed, you will be able to pay off your (virtual) student loans. Game mechanics couldn’t be simpler: your finger is the red pen, and you tap errors to fix them. Beware, though: if you fat-finger the wrong line, or otherwise tap a correct word, you get a time penalty. And the pressure is on: If you don’t deliver average student grades in the C range or below, you don’t get paid!

Here’s what it looks like:

Screenshot of the Grading Game

Although they are very short and not very well-written, the essays are arguably the best part of this game, as they draw facts from reddit’s page of especially interesting Wikipedia entries (how can you not love this speech by Soggy Sweat, Jr.?) According the game designers, the typos and grammatical errors are randomly generated from lists of the most statistically common such errors.

The literal-minded might object to several aspects of the game, such as the fact that it imagines a world where TAs are paid by the error, where it’s possible to earn more than $1000 for correcting a three-sentence essay, and where grading is fundamentally a hunt-the-typo enterprise. And there’s no doubt that for people who actually do grading, it’s a bit disorienting to shut down your normal grading instincts and focus only on typos and obvious grammatical errors. (For example, errors of citation–leaving out quotation marks around quotations, for example, are not recognized by the game. Similarly, writing that is awkward or vague or misleading, but not outright ungrammatical, is fine.)

I also would have to agree with Phil Scuderi‘s observation that the game isn’t really about either grading or grammar, but is rather about tricking your brain to see what is actually on the screen, rather than seeing the correct grammar that it expects. And it’s also true that there’s not a ton of variety in the game: it offers you one trick, and you either enjoy it or not.

But I will say that The Grading Game makes proofreading surprisingly engaging. By organizing each challenge into three 30-second increments, the game is a fun way to kill little pockets of time. While it’s no Kingdom Rush, It’s currently priced at $0.99, and there’s also a free version that lets you play a few levels before you plunk down your dollar.

(I learned about The Grading Game via “The Fiver, which is The Guardian‘s daily tea time e-mail rounding up news, commentary, and videos about soccer football, and which is a fine digital distraction in its own right.)

Do you have a mobile game you’re enjoying at the moment? Why not share in comments?

Photo “Project 365 #231: 190810 The Proof of the Pudding” by Flickr user Creative Commons licensed BY-2.0